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While places like Winter Park’s Trestle Bike Park are shutting down operations for the year, and many of us may be looking ahead to winter, 15 area high schoolers are just hitting their mountain-biking stride as the Summit Mountain Bike Team heads into its second race of the season, the Cloud City Challenge, Sunday in Leadville.

Currently ranked fourth in the state, the team has come a long way since its one-member inaugural season in 2010.

“It was history in the making that first year,” said team director Marla Dyer-Biggin.

Her son Oliver, who has since graduated, was the team’s only member.

Although not a Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) sanctioned sport, the team runs as a loosely school-affiliated club team.

Now with 15 members, it continues to grow each year.

“It’s not the easiest thing to find out about us. We are getting more known,” Dyer-Biggin said. “I’m very proud of what it’s been built into.”

The Colorado High School Cycling League also had its inaugural season back in 2010, and it, too, has grown considerably since.

The first race this season had around 500 participants, and Dyer-Biggin said the league continues to expand year after year, so much so that it’s discussing the possibility of splitting into eastern and western divisions.

While the Summit team doesn’t have the membership numbers of some of the larger clubs, like Boulder’s, which is currently ranked ahead of them, it may have a competitive advantage, according to one of the team’s coaches, Thane Wright.

“Our Summit kids are way above the curve. They’re fitness junkies like the rest of us,” he said.

And Wright would know. In the summers he’s in charge of the popular Rocky Mountain Endurance Series mountain races.